Cuparius.com

I just arrived home from work tonight on Christmas Eve, and I must say it has been an interesting holiday season. I worked 60 hours this week between my two retail jobs, and you'd think the festive spirit would be ground out of me by now, or that I would have blown a fuse or three in the past few weeks, but I am, in fact, in a state of Yuletide bliss. I've even been enjoying customer service and cashier duties. (More than 95% of my work at the bookshop thus far has been at the cash register. In fact, I was ringing customers until past closing time today.) Can you believe it? Mr. Gordon Cooper having fun dealing with customers all day, ringing sales hour after hour on Christmas Eve? I'm shocked, too. Christmas has been wonderful and it hasn't even arrived yet.

Usually when I drive home from work on Christmas Eve I hear The Nutcracker Suite on Public Radio or see it on PBS when I get home, but today as I drove home I heard Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion Christmas Special and it was the perfect transition from a day of retail mania to a pleasant evening spent with my family (which will start after I post this update and go to my parents' house). If they repeat the program tonight or on Christmas Day on your local Public Radio station, I recommend listening to it. It's a very good show.

I meant to mention in an update I didn't have time to post that I saw the new King Kong movie on opening day. It was spectacular. There were a few things that ought to have been done differently or omitted (brontosaurs), but overall it was amazing. Naomi Watts was stunning (in talent as well as beauty), Kong was performed and rendered magnificently, and the "sets" of 1930s New York and Skull Island were a wonder to behold. I even thought Adrien Brody was good in his part, and I don't like Brody at all. If you have any intention of seeing this movie someday, see it now while it is on the big screen. So much will be lost in the confines of a television set, even if you have one of those extra-wide Tower of Babel plasma screens.

I'm hoping to see Pride and Prejudice soon before it leaves all the cinemas. Keira Knightley is in it, which is a very good reason to watch it (although not the only reason -- she has been in some wretched movies, too). Jackie loaned me her copy of Ang Lee's adaptation of Sense and Sensibility a few years ago, and I enjoyed it very much. If Pride and Prejudice equals it, I will consider my money well spent.

Ending this update as I began it on the subject of Christmas, I mentioned that the holiday season has been interesting. As I was leaving my car and walking to my front door a few minutes ago, I heard the odd sound of an air raid siren and a steady clanging proceeding down the streets. That's a curious thing to hear nowadays. Well, a few minutes later, I heard the sound again and what did I see coming down my street but an antique fire engine completely covered with multi-colored Christmas lights and a lit Christmas tree in the back, driven by a firefighter in dress uniform, blaring away with its old-fashioned siren and clanging its bell. Unexpected, eccentric, and delightful -- that's what it was. That's the sort of thing I like about Christmas. I'm beginning to enjoy this time of year again.

To everyone, Merry Christmas, Happy Belated Winter Solstice, Happy Boxing Day, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Saint Stephen's Day, and a Joyful New Year. Peace, prosperity, health, happiness, and love to you all, wherever you may be. Take care.